


andante

by pulpofiction (pifflapodus_scriptor)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, Romance, bittersweet fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1554212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pifflapodus_scriptor/pseuds/pulpofiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>two lonely young people start something up, slowly, and with great care</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

Despite the clean white lines and shining black faux-leather seats of the exercise machines, Asami sees insects when she looks at them. They sit like squat metal grasshoppers and slender-limbed praying mantises with pistons in their legs, hissing softly as beefy, sweating men push on their wings, huffing red-faced through sets of weights.

She joins the gym out of boredom, and because the home gym with its lone treadmill and Hiroshi’s mostly unused Bowflex is stark and lonely. The yoga classes are nice too, even though she’s a cut above most of her classmates. (Her poses read like an aviary: the Crow, the Rooster, the Eagle and the Pigeon; she has yet to muster enough abdominal strength to manage the Peacock for more than a second.)

And even though she doesn’t really talk to anyone, Asami just likes going, because there’s a solidarity built out of mutual soreness and casual, unspoken competition with the person next to you. A breathless nod of the head and a grin, waving your hand  _go ahead_  to the person waiting for the drinking fountain, the brief “hey, Danny” to the kid who works the front desk on weekends. Comradeship in exercise, no need for names or anything; just recognition that everyone here is stretching and puffing and sweating together, all of them in it to win it, lose it, whatever. At the gym, one man’s hard work is still another man’s hard work.

It’s a Thursday night in late September when Asami sees Mako for the first time, and he promptly passes from her memory as the tanned guy in a plain maroon bro-tank, jumping rope on the mat by the lockers. Asami passes him on her way to the locker rooms, pulling her right elbow over her head with her left hand, only just noticing the quick  _whapwhapwhapwhap_  of the jump rope as it blurs around him in an oval streak of blue and white.

And then she sees him again a week later, skipping rope again, and this time she notices the fluid, expert snap of his wrists as he twists the rope and nimbly skips the loop. It’s almost girlish - well, she hasn’t jumped rope since she was eleven and it was a  _girl_  thing,  _let’s double dutch_  and the rhyming chants and all that. There is a butterfly of sweat darkening the fabric on his lower back, and his shoulders flex with smooth power with every turn of the rope. Asami goes back to watching the electronic display on her elliptical machine, focusing instead on her heart rate flashing healthy and vigorous across the screen.

She sort of forgets him again. Pins him like a scrap of paper to the cork-board of her memory, the guy who comes on Thursday nights, just another regular who doesn’t really want to be bothered, and so Asami moves on.

In December, Hiroshi pulls a muscle trying to lift a box, and as Asami fetches a bag of frozen peas from the refrigerator, she thinks about picking up weightlifting. The weightlifting section is normally full of high school boys trying to wring every drop of testosterone out of their pimpled adolescence, or dudes with thick necks making husky  _HUAH_  and  _HRRGH_  noises deep in their throat as they dead-lift. But like hell she’s going to strain her back like her dad, she thinks, as he grumbles and moans and blames her for his torturous ordeal: why didn’t she pick up the box for him? What’s that gym membership for, anyway?

The next morning, Asami stops at the front desk, resting her elbow on the countertop and flicking a loose curl from her face.

"Hey Danny, can you set me up personal trainer? I want to get into weightlifting, but I want to do it right," she says, and Danny - blonde and square-jawed, two dimples adding a childish charm to his face - smiles at her.

"Sure, Asami, you just need to schedule a session. I think… we have Mako free tomorrow at two. He’s a little grouchy, but he’s really good," Danny says, flipping through his clipboard to a calendar page covered in chicken-scratch pencil marks and smudgy neon highlights.

"Perfect, thanks," Asami says, and re-tucks her yoga mat under her arm, her thoughts already singing full of different asanas,  _anjaneyasana_  and  _bakasana_  and _salabhasana_ , the lyrical notes of Hindi played on her tendons and muscles, instruments for peace and strength.

***

"Oh,  _you’re_  Mako,” Asami says, as she trots into the weightlifting section and drops her water bottle and towel onto the floor with an easy thump. The weightlifting section is in the back of the gym, away from the windows, and the three walls are lined with floor-length mirrors. The weight benches sit in two neat rows: another parade of soldierly gunmetal bugs.

Mako gives her an odd look, arms crossed as he sits on the weight bench, knees wide apart. His knee jumps in staccato rhythm, beating an impatient tattoo. She was ten minutes late.

"Uh… Yeah?" he says, with a suspicious scowl. Asami laughs, pressing the tip of her hand to the side of her forehead.

"No, I mean, you come every Thursday and jump rope, right? I didn’t know you worked here," she says, and to her surprise, Mako blushes, scratching the back of his head with a sheepish look.

“ _Oh_ , yeah. I do that,” he says. “Jump rope. And. Work here.”

She just stands there smiling and he just sits there blushing until he starts, fitting her with a quick glance from her head to toes and then right back to her eyes.

"You’re wearing closed-toe shoes," he says, and Asami lifts her heel to her knee to look at her gym shoe.

"Oh. Should I have worn heels instead?” she says, and if Mako didn’t look so stupidly embarrassed, ducking his head away from her and rubbing his nose with a swipe of his thumb, she’d laugh out loud.

"Um - weightlifting, closed-toe shoes, in case you drop weights on your feets -  _feet_ , drop weights on your feet - ” Mako splutters, and freezes as Asami puts her hand on his shoulder.

"Just show me what to do," she says, and he gives a short laugh, shakes his head like he’s clearing a fog, and stands up.

"Okay, weights," Mako says with a purposeful tone, lacing his fingers together and lifting his hands high over his head, palms turned skyward; and after a sigh of satisfaction he gets straight to work. How to keep her back straight, how not to stress her shoulders, how to balance her muscle groups: chest and back, triceps and biceps, quads and hamstrings. And by the time Mako starts her curling with 10-pound dumbbells, Asami decides the way he tries not to look at her is cute, and so is the way he scowls at some kid’s bad form, and also the way he accepts her challenge and does ten handstand pushups against the wall.

His face reddens with effort and his shirt slides down his chest, the grey fabric hanging open in a soft wrinkled curl and revealing the shallow furrows of his lean, brass-color abdomen. There are small chevrons of black hair in a thin line, running from his navel into his waistband, and they vanish from sight as Mako backbends gracefully away from the wall and hops to his feet, upright again, flushed and sweating.

He’s  _really_  cute.

"Wow," Asami says, and Mako smiles and shrugs, tugging awkwardly at his shirt and dabbing sweat from his eyebrows with the side of his palm.

"Ah, you know… I work out," he says, sweet modesty flavored with a tart irony, and Asami giggles. She steps on the back of her other heel and then switches sides, wiggling her feet out of her shoes.

“Now it’s my turn to impress you,” she says, kneeling on the floor, and Mako watches with wide eyes - well and truly impressed - as she finally, at last, pulls off a perfect Peacock pose.


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things pick up

They see each other in short bursts of presence,  _oh Mako’s here_ ,  _he looks busy_ ; Asami waves at him from the elliptical machine as he coils the jump rope around his hand and elbow and Mako gives her a brief smile in response, face shining with sweat. And it goes on like that for about a week, then two, and they don’t actually talk until one night when Asami leaves the gym and sees Mako, who left half an hour ago, leaning against his car with an expression colder than the ash-blackened snowdrifts banked around the parking lot. One hand tucked under the opposite arm for warmth, legs locked, staring at his phone.

The bright white lights of the streetlamps saturate them both with color; his red scarf, her deep purple winter coat, and the steamy wisps of breath from their mouths rise and vanish into the black night air. The parking lot is empty aside from them.

“Hey,” she says, re-shouldering her duffle bag, and Mako registers her with a single glance. Just a flick of his honey-colored eyes.

“Yo,” Mako mutters, and lifts his head to glare over her, at the gym building, mouth twisted in annoyance as he holds his phone to his ear and waits. She gets the distinct impression that he wants her to leave, and she doesn’t.

“Is something wrong?” Asami says, as Mako jams the phone into his coat pocket with a short huff. Whoever he called didn’t pick up.

“Car won’t start,” he says, and scratches the back of his head, sighing in an old, weary sort of way, a gesture of total resignation. Asami sneaks a look at the car and thinks it might never start again; an indistinct, sand-brown model sedan that looks older than both of them, with a big black rubber lip of a bumper and enthusiastically dented.

“I can give you a ride home,” Asami says, and he startles.

“No. I’ll wait for my brother to call me back,” he says firmly, standing up a little straighter and crossing his arms. If it weren’t so transparently an issue of pride, he would look petulant.

“Don’t be silly,” Asami says, “I don’t mind. And I figure it’s not  _really_  a good idea to stand out here in the cold all night.”

He shrugs and doesn’t meet her eyes, like he’ll just deal with it, and so she takes matters into her own hands by grabbing his.

“Oh, come on, you’re gonna freeze,” she says, tugging on his wrist, and Mako’s stiff resistance finally relents. She lets go as he follows her to her car, and he almost gingerly lowers himself onto the passenger seat, the leather squeaking as he sits. He looks back at his car with a wistful glance and Asami realizes that her leather seats probably cost more than the entire jalopy.

“Alright, where we going?” Asami says, and Mako’s eyes roll towards her, a motion like an animal sensing strange movement somewhere close by, instinctually cautious. His hand closes in his lap, a brief, reflexive gesture. 

“I live in South Bridge,” he says, and presses the top of his fist to his mouth, slipping into thought, holding her gaze as he waits for her reaction. What’s a nice girl like her doing, going to a place like South Bridge? 

“Well, then let’s go,” Asami says cheerfully, “A little bad reputation doesn’t bother me.”

 _You don’t have to be ashamed of it_ , she wants to add, but she doesn’t have to - he gives her a genuine, almost grateful smile of relief. It crosses his face as a spark, illuminating his features with color and vanishing within a second. Like it never happened.

He taps his address into her navigation and for five minutes, they drive in silence, stuck in the awkward suspense of having to talk to a near stranger. Asami tries not to fidget with the radio. Mako curls up against the side, his hand braced against the side of his face, staring out the window with a mild blankness. 

“So you have a brother,” Asami blurts.

“What? Oh, yeah, I do,” Mako says, turning to face her, “um. He’s sixteen, his name is Bolin.”

Saying his brother’s name brightens his entire demeanor - his shoulders relax and the hardness of his face softens with warmth. She gives herself a point for hitting the mark.

“Oh, cool. What high school does he go to?”

"Corbett," Mako says, "he plays water polo. And he’s also on the swim team. He loves it, even though you get all beat up when you play. Someone gave him a bloody nose during a game once and he wanted to keep playing anyway." 

Asami laughs as she turns the wheel and slides the car around a curve, hand over hand, momentum leaning her towards him with a firm, gentle weight.

"So, did he?"  

Mako chortles.

"He tried," he says, the vowel sloping over a drawn-out sarcasm, "but I didn’t let him."

"Dumbass," he adds affectionately, after a short pause. 

"But, uh, yeah, so - he’s probably good enough for a scholarship in a few years but I have to make sure he studies and stuff, otherwise he slacks off and has to repeat world literature. It’s not like he’s dumb but he’s just not  _focused_  - “

Mako rattles on with the blithe long-suffering tones of a parent, an exasperation completely endeared to its cause, and Asami colors in the details around a negative space: Calls his brother for a ride home. Doesn’t let him play with a broken nose. Buckles him down to study. There are people missing in this family photograph, cut out with careful lines, outlining him with their absence.

" - and he likes bio, at least, so you know, you make it relate to exercise and like, carbohydrates and lactic acid build-up _, this shit is going on in your body, bro_ , so he’s getting good grades in his science classes - “

"Wait, what about you?" Asami says, trying to look at him and keep her eyes on the road at the same time. The headlamps of the car are painting an ellipse of light on the road ahead, grey-yellow and pale, and they’re finally crossing the river into South Bridge. The river sprawls away in the darkness, unfurling like enormous opaque wings on either side of them. 

"Me? Oh, I guess I like… math," Mako says, tensing against the sudden swerve in attention. His tongue darts out between his teeth on the word  _math_  and his gaze drops to his hand, fingers moving in a mindless gesture of counting, curling to his palm one at a time. “There’s no uncertainty. You have the answer or you don’t. And they wanted to put me in multi-variable calculus as a senior.”

 _But_. Unspoken. An unresolved chord of music, aborted right before the pay-off. He sounds too tired to be bitter.

Asami considers him out the corner of her eye; trying to sketch him out, map the geography of this proud, shy little island she landed on. But even talking about his brother there was an unexplored touch of darkness to the landscape. Maybe he just doesn’t like talking about himself. Some people are like that.

That’s fine. She doesn’t really like it all that much either.

So with the ease of a dancer she pirouettes the conversation towards the engineers at Future Industries, they taught her about imaginary numbers when she was eight and bored and alone in the factory, she’s seen whiteboards in the R and D department covered in equations like something right out of sci-fi, but it’s so cool, you can talk about and describe and define the world in a language that anyone can understand… And he just listens, content.

Asami pulls up to a nondescript apartment complex and he opens the door, swings both legs around, plants his winter boots firmly onto the sidewalk. Mako stands up and turns around, slouching with one forearm along the doorframe. She didn’t notice it before but his coat is large on him, drooping off his chest and down his arms in large curls of empty fabric. It makes him look smaller, thinner. 

"Um, thanks for the ride," he starts, and Asami waves it off.

"Take me out for coffee and we’ll call it even," she says. That stuns him like a blow to the head, jaw falling slack, color rising to his face, and Asami grins.

"Oh, come on, you can handle multi-variable calculus. You can handle a cup of coffee," she jokes, and Mako blushes furiously, huffs, and slams the door shut, all in quick succession.

"I mean - " he says, opening the door again with nervous fumbling, "deal."

"Deal," Asami confirms, and watches him lope down the walk slick with melted snow, bricks gleaming in the half-light, and shoulder his way into the foyer. She sits in the car for a few minutes, checking her phone, deleting Hiroshi’s missed call, and wondering if it’s not too late to catch a movie at the promenade. One of those strident teeth-grinding comedies, or a hushed French drama with only three songs on the soundtrack. 

She spends the next hour just driving around the city, her phone turned off, slipping through the streets in her silent shell of softly vibrating iron. Passes storefronts all lit up, no one inside them, dollhouses in vivid candy colors full of stiff white ghosts. No reason to go home yet. None at all.

***

The next few days bruise her a bit, between the restless boredom and the dizzying moments of vague sadness, her mood’s center of gravity swooping like she missed a step or several. Asami spends an entire day lying on the floor of her room, staring at the ceiling, lost in a stupor, shoving away every memory of her one year in college with vicious spurts of anger.

She wants to call someone, talk to them, just to practice the subtle art of presence and remembrance. But every other name in her phone reads like a vulgarity or an insult, so Asami throws it aside with a fit of energy and rubs her face with both hands. It’s early evening and the sky outside is shining, baroque in its silver and peach winter grandeur. Hiroshi will be home from work soon. Time to go to the gym.

"Hey, I didn’t know you worked the front desk," Asami says, pressing both hands to the countertop, and Mako rolls his shoulders in dismissal. He fills out the gym’s uniform black polo, his thick, brawny physicality at odds with the refined cut of the shirt.

"Danny’s out, he’s sick," Mako says, plucking her membership card from her hand, their fingers tracing asymptotes of movement in the air. Close, almost touching, only just missing. He swipes the card and hands it back without looking at her, scowling at the computer; she stays and his gaze flicks up to meet hers.

"What?" he mutters, turning back almost immediately to the screen, "why’re you staring at me? Go work out, we close in an hour."

His cheeks are several shades pinker than when he started the sentence, an upward twitch in his lips. There’s a textbook bound in paper bag next to the computer, a blue spiral-bound notebook at an angle to the book. 

"What are you working on?" Asami says, using a fingertip to nimbly flip the book open by the corner, and Mako slides it forward.

"An essay for my government class," he says, "nothing special."

The inside cover of the textbook is stamped with the name of a local community college in faint blue ink and she slowly turns the pages, her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth, feeling an ache of jealousy. 

"Are you free on Friday?" Mako asks, yanking her back to the surface, out of the old depths of heartbreak. "I owe you coffee. If you’re not, it’s okay, I can find another… day… "

Asami smiles and he trails off, mouth opening and closing without sound.

"Friday’s perfect," she says, “Here’s my number.”

She takes a marker from the orange mug of pens and casts a glance around the counter, searching for a spare sheet of paper. Mako offers her a notepad and she takes his whole hand instead, her fingers closing around his wrist. With deft, short strokes, she writes her number across the top of his hand, the ink bleeding in minute fractals across his skin, tendons and green-blue veins and the bony hills of his knuckles shifting under her touch. His hand is calm and relaxed in her grasp.

Mako lifts his hand and tilts his head, eyebrows quirking together as he narrows his eyes at her phone number. He glances back at her and on impulse, Asami reaches up and ruffles his hair, bowing his head forward. “Good luck on your paper, Einstein.” 

She looks back over her shoulder as she trots off to the ellipticals, still beaming; he’s staring after her with a stupefied look. After a moment he gathers himself with a snort, returning to the screen and frowning in concentration; almost without realizing it, he smiles too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they have sex in chapter 3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> getting it on for the first time

The first date, coffee, runs swiftly, an over-pouring of energy that surprises them both. Asami meets Mako at a cheaply bohemian cafe in a strip mall and they huddle over their pastries at a small wooden table, trading stories about workouts and sports and regimens. Neutral territory, safe, with white flags in their smiles. The second one is tidy, a movie they both think is just okay, but for different reasons: Asami finds the characters unbelievable. Mako thinks it was filmed weird. In the car ride home, they have a brief, efficient negotiation of personal secrets: his parents are dead, there was a car crash, he was eight; her mother died too, of breast cancer. 

She packages her one year in college into a blameless phrase. “It just wasn’t right for me,” she says, as Mako listens quietly, his gaze forward through his hazy yellow windshield; “I didn’t make any friends.”

He could ask  _why_  or  _how come_  or  _couldn’t you have done this or that_ , and he doesn’t. He just puts his hand on her knee and squeezes, like he knows exactly how hard that can be, and how cruel people are. It makes sense. The only other person he ever mentions is Bolin.

They steal glances and smiles from each other at the gym, slowly moving on to phrases, sentences, entire conversations. On Tuesday Mako helps himself to her time on the treadmills, keeping pace with her one machine over; on Thursday Asami comes away with a handful of his pull-ups, watching with her hand on her hip as he lifts his chin over the bar with graceful ease. Asami goes home and realizes in the shower that she has a space cleared out in her thoughts, just for him. A big space, she discovers, with her showerhead angled just the right way.

The third date: ice-skating at the outdoor rink on the promenade. Her idea. The white lights strip them of their shadows, their skates hiss and scuff against the ice, and the pressure of his hands on hers is both determined and hesitant as she shows him how to skate - lean left, lean right, don’t look down - she lets go. He slips and falls with a dull thump. Asami glides tight circles around him, laughing as she helps him to his feet.

And afterwards, almost like a postscript on the back of a postcard-perfect date, Mako kisses her. Plucks it straight from her mouth in the middle of a sentence:  _what kind of person doesn’t like marshmallows in their hot choc -_

His lips are cold and sweet. He lifts his head and looks away, taking an innocent sip of his own hot chocolate, eyebrows raised in smug triumph, and Asami can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face.

But she’s not naïve. She knows that every young person, when they first feel it, thinks they’ve discovered real love, believes theirs is the purest and most ageless, the kind of love foretold in books and preserved as constellations. The timeless stuff of fairy tales. They walk down the promenade, each word they speak cradled in a smoky curl of breath, their fingers threading together. This isn’t new, Asami thinks. It’s not special.

She hopes anyway, and kisses him again. 

* * *

Hiroshi goes out of town for a week. The first evening alone is warm and lazy and unbothered. No one asks her what she did all day, and no one is angry at her answer: _nothing_. 

But the silence unnerves her by the second evening.

“Hey, let’s skip the gym tonight. Why don’t you come over to my place instead?” Asami says, and on the other end of the phone Mako pauses.

“I was going to do weights today,” he says, his voice fuzzier through the phone, and Asami tumbles onto the brown leather couch in the living room, her palm on her forehead. She sweeps her hand through her hair, fanning it out across the couch. Outside, the clear winter sky is a darkening purple.

“I have the house all to myself right now,” she says, “my dad’s on a business trip.”

“Okay… so why don’t you want to go to the gym?”

Asami holds the phone out over her head and frowns. Is he joking?

“Because I want  _you_  to  _come_   _here_ ,” she says, and her enthusiasm achieves what subtlety does not. Mako laughs on the other end of the phone and shows up half an hour later, eyes widening as he steps into the vaulted, marble-floored foyer. She kisses him hello and it flusters him, to have her hands tilt his head forward for a kiss, his soft  _oh_  of surprise interrupted.

His eyes are bright when she pulls away and his hands fall easily onto her hips.

“So, I was thinking we could maybe order some take-out… and watch a movie…or something,” Asami says, biting her lip, and Mako smiles.

“Right.  _Or something_ ,” he says, and this time he moves first, gathering her hair in his hands so that it spills through his fingers. The way he kisses her now is slick and neat and reserved, like he could make a mess out of her if he  _really_  let go, and his tongue slides across hers for just a single teasing fraction of a second.

“Take off your coat,” Asami breathes, her heart pounding in her breast, or maybe it’s _his_  heart pounding; they’re too close to tell. Mako shrugs out of his coat and allows her to take his hand as she guides him out of the foyer and into the living room, thinking - where?

And  _how_? What does he want? How does he like it? Is having sex like riding a bicycle, Asami thinks, do you always remember how to do it, what if he’s like the guy from the fraternity (selfish and regrettable), or her first boyfriend (inexperienced, which was fine, but with a frantic insecurity, which wasn’t) what if he has  _problems_  and what if it just goes bad like he comes too fast, or doesn’t care if she gets hers, what if what if what  _if_

“Hey,” she says, turning around and placing her hand on his chest, “Mako… I really like you.”

His face brightens with a faint blush and somehow it makes him look younger, more boyish. It’s reassuring. 

“I… really like you too,” Mako says, and then, rapidly: “Are you wondering - is this some kind of ‘are we on the same page’ thing, because if that’s the case, I don’t mind - just, you know, as long as  _you’re_  comfortable with…”

She laughs and puts two fingers on his lips. Even more reassuring is the idea that Mako is equally nervous. 

“I just wanted you to know,” she says and Mako responds to that just the way she wants him to: by letting the silence settle around them, gentle and soft, as he cups her face in his hands and kisses her again. Just as gently, just as softly.

And then his attention goes to her neck, his warm, damp lips skating across her skin, and little tremors start fluttering all over her. Asami wants him here,  _now,_  and she fumbles for his jeans, tucks her thumb into a belt loop, and tugs it, jerking him backwards - Mako stumbles over his own foot and drops onto the couch,  _flump_. 

Asami straddles his lap, the leather couch creaking underneath them, and kisses him, an open-mouth, hungry kiss, her forearms propped on his chest as she pulls his head forward to deepen the kiss. 

When they break apart Asami arches her back and pulls her shirt over her head, her dark hair spilling across her shoulders and onto her lacy maroon bra. Then she stands up, takes her jeans off, and jumps onto him again, smirking all the while at Mako’s furious blush.

“So - what movie did you wanna watch?” he says, crossing his arms with flippant casualness as she resettles herself on his lap, and Asami sits there in stunned disbelief for half a second -  _is he fucking for real right now -_ before stifling his laughter again. He goes  _oomph_  as she pushes forward with her mouth, his head swaying back, her hand fumbling with his zipper, his fingers traveling lightly along her bra strap and with a faint pop undoing the clasp.

And it feels like, to her, that they’re both starting to be less careful: there’s something a little insistent and aggressive in the way he kisses her breasts, hot and wet and with small scrapes of his teeth as he mouths around her nipples, and Mako jerks Asami closer with one arm tight around her waist so she can feel him hard and growing harder through his boxers.

“Wait,” Mako says, looking up at her and putting his hands squarely on her waist, “is there anything… you know, you really want me to do?”

“Like what?” Asami says, screwing up her face in thought, “We’re just having fun, I’m not demanding anything.”

“I mean, you’re sitting practically bare-ass naked on my lap. I want to make you feel good,” he says calmly, brushing a hand through her hair, watching the curls spill like oil through his fingers, and Asami chews on her lip. Thinking.

Then she leans forward, resting her head on his, and tiptoes her fingers up his chest to his jaw.

“Why don’t you… ” she murmurs, sliding a fingertip across his lower lip, “go down on me?”

He glances up at her through his lashes, his eyes bright and glittering, and smiles.

So she rolls off him and tumbles onto the couch; Mako takes a moment to take off his own clothes. 

“Just returning the favor,” he says, stepping out of his jeans, with a wink that strikes Asami as so endearing and so dorky she has to laugh out loud.

“No, no, it’s funny - you’re cute, I promise, Mako come here,” she says, motioning him forward, because his look of complete embarrassment needs to be soothed; and Asami gives him a quick smooch. Mako sighs with relief and slides her panties down her bare legs as he kneels on the white carpet in front of her, dropping them off to the side. She bites her lip again, studying his broad, muscled shoulders, his upper arms tensed and shining with light sweat. He really is just ungodly amounts of attractive.

Mako eyes her for a few seconds, his eyes darting from her cunt to her face and back again, his arms resting easily atop her thighs. Her arousal pulses like the feeling is trying to break free from her body and Asami feels almost  _too_  exposed to him; with her legs spread and the glass doors across the living room, keeping them warm from the black night outside.

“So, I guess we’re not ordering take-out,” Mako says.

“What?” 

“I’m dining in - ”

“Oh my  _god_ ,” Asami snorts, brushing her hand back through his hair, and his grin grows even wider and then disappears as he shoulders her thighs and presses his mouth to her cunt. He kisses her, licks her with long, slow strokes of his tongue, sending a wave of shivers rolling up her body. She tightens her grasp on his hair and tilts her head, her mouth falling slack as Mako licks and taps her aching clit with quick strokes and slides two fingers into her cunt, moving slowly, drawing low moans from somewhere deep inside of her.

“… _faster_ ,” she breathes, as her muscles start to tense with anticipation, all of her senses fogging with a hazy, hot pleasure; and Mako thrusts faster with his fingers as he sucks and licks her with greater strength. The feeling of his tongue burns her nerves and he keeps  _going_  even when she crosses her legs around his neck and pulls him closer, holding his mouth to her as she -  _comes_ , a ferocious white shuddering, curling over him with a quiet gasp.

Asami lets go, panting for breath. Mako lifts his head, beaming and a little flushed. He has one hand is tucked into his boxers, the blue fabric spotted with pre-cum, and his bare chest rises and falls with the strain of staying off the edge.

“Wow, I must’ve done a terrible job,” Mako says, and for a moment she just looks at him, light-headed and weightless, happiness soaring in her breast. His hair is messier, sticking up in all different directions, and his mouth glistens with wetness until he lifts his hand and wipes it off.

Asami can’t really say anything to that, except a short, breathless laugh -

With a sudden movement he grabs her face and kisses her with messy abandon as he falls back onto the carpet, dragging her off the couch, his lips still tart with her taste. His cock nudges against her thigh and Asami feels another sweaty rush of arousal - Mako huffs, eyes screwed shut, as she mouths along his jaw and gropes her hand into his boxers, massaging his cock with firm strokes.

It doesn’t take long before her fingers are slippery with cum - he opens his eyes, half-lidded and glazed over, and with effortless ease Mako flips Asami onto her back and settles between her legs.

“Okay,” he says, “Okay. O _kay_. Okay?”

He cages her head with his elbows, looking earnestly into her eyes, and Asami nods.

She still strokes him, but slower and with more teasing - sliding her fingertips around the head, reaching to caress his balls, scraping her nails on him with light, gentle touches -

“Yes?” he says. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Asami says happily.

“Condom,” he chokes, fumbling for his jeans a foot away from her shoulder, jerking lightly into her hand - he finds the condom in his wallet, sits up; and with his hands over hers they roll it down his cock.

Asami wraps her arms around his neck - her back canting onto the carpet as Mako slides into her, a stomach-clenching fullness she hasn’t felt in a long time. He lowers his mouth to hers, their lips smashed together, Asami making a throaty, senseless _mmph_  with each slow thrust, her fingers scrabbling across his muscled back - Mako buries his face in her neck, his breath ragged and hot on her skin; she whispers _harder go harder_  and he picks up the pace, his hips slamming into her thighs and sending fresh new shudders through her body - her head spinning and her legs locked around his back, forcing him in deeper -

“Oh, fuck - Asami, I’m gonna come, Asami I’m - I’m _…_  ”

Mako makes a sudden fist in her hair and comes without a sound, bracing himself against her

 and then he relaxes, and rolls onto his side with a heavy, tired  _thump_.

They lie there in the silence, catching their breath together. Asami can feel his eyes on her, tracing the lines of her form, the curve of her breasts and her lips. She could fall asleep like this, in the crook of his arm, held close to a strong body radiating with soft heat. It’s nice.

“Hope we don’t leave a wet spot on your carpet,” he mumbles into her hair, and Asami turns her head to face him. That’s nothing she can’t fix with a quick call to the housecleaner, or some judicious scrubbing, and it’s not like her dad would notice anyway. She smiles, reckless with apathy.

“Whatever,” she says. “Hey, let’s order Kuang’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll write more when the mood strikes me

**Author's Note:**

> i love masami but more than that i love sad masami


End file.
